Mark Twain, a Biography. Complete eBook

It seemed the clearest presentment ever offered in
the matter of predestined circumstance—­predestined
from the instant when that primal atom felt the vital
thrill. Mark Twain’s early life, however
imperfectly recorded, exemplifies this postulate.
If through the years still ahead of us the course
of destiny seems less clearly defined, it is only
because thronging events make the threads less easy
to trace. The web becomes richer, the pattern
more intricate and confusing, but the line of fate
neither breaks nor falters, to the end.

LXXVI

Onthebuffalo “Express”

With the beginning of life in Buffalo, Mark Twain
had become already a world character—­a
man of large consequence and events. He had no
proper realization of this, no real sense of the size
of his conquest; he still regarded himself merely
as a lecturer and journalist, temporarily popular,
but with no warrant to a permanent seat in the world’s
literary congress. He thought his success something
of an accident. The fact that he was prepared
to settle down as an editorial contributor to a newspaper
in what was then only a big village is the best evidence
of a modest estimate of his talents.

He “worked like a horse,” is the verdict
of those who were closely associated with him on the
Express. His hours were not regular, but they
were long. Often he was at his desk at eight in
the morning, and remained there until ten or eleven
at night.

His working costume was suited to comfort rather than
show. With coat, vest, collar, and tie usually
removed (sometimes even his shoes), he lounged in
his chair, in any attitude that afforded the larger
ease, pulling over the exchanges; scribbling paragraphs,
editorials, humorous skits, and what not, as the notion
came upon him. J. L. Lamed, his co-worker (he
sat on the opposite side of the same table), remembers
that Mark Twain enjoyed his work as he went along—­the
humor of it—­and that he frequently laughed
as some whimsicality or new absurdity came into his
mind.

“I doubt,” writes Lamed, “if he
ever enjoyed anything more than the jackknife engraving
that he did on a piece of board of a military map of
the siege of Paris, which was printed in the Express
from his original plate, with accompanying explanations
and comments. His half-day of whittling and laughter
that went with it are something that I find pleasant
to remember. Indeed, my whole experience of association
with him is a happy memory, which I am fortunate in
having.... What one saw of him was always the
actual Mark Twain, acting out of his own nature simply,
frankly, without pretense, and almost without reserve.
It was that simplicity and naturalness in the man
which carried his greatest charm.”

Lamed, like many others, likens Mark Twain to Lincoln
in various of his characteristics. The two worked
harmoniously together: Lamed attending to the
political direction of the journal, Clemens to the
literary, and what might be termed the sentimental
side. There was no friction in the division of
labor, never anything but good feeling between them.
Clemens had a poor opinion of his own comprehension
of politics, and perhaps as little regard for Lamed’s
conception of humor. Once when the latter attempted
something in the way of pleasantry his associate said: